Thursday, May 28, 2020

When Should You Go To Human Resources

When Should You Go To Human Resources It’s an exciting challenge to start a new job â€" especially if it’s your first experience of employment. There’s loads to remember and lots of people to get to know â€" and one of the most important people you’ll be meeting is your Human Resources manager, because their main aim is your welfare. You’re an asset to the company now, a crucial cog in its workings, so it’s important that HR exists to make sure you, and your colleagues, are happy at work. Despite this, there’s sometimes some confusion about when it’s appropriate to approach the HR department. You might find yourself asking if your query is important enough, whether your complaint is justified or if there’s anything they can do to help. To help you out, below are five situations when it’s always relevant to go to Human Resources. 1) Issues with your manager, colleagues or customers: You’ll want to raise a grievance about someone who works with you if you feel you have been singled out, harassed or bullied â€" going to HR is a given. But did you know following recent changes to the equality act, it is possible to bring prejudice to light even if you are not discriminated against personally? If you feel someone’s been unfairly treated, whether because of sexuality, age, race or disability, you have the right to raise the issue with your company, even if you don’t share the characteristic that’s being discriminated against. ‘The long and short of it is this: if it’s offensive to anyone then it shouldn’t be in the workplace,’ says Kevin Orchard, a chartered HR manager from Cornwall, ‘And if you feel awkward about addressing it with the person, you can ask HR to mediate or even raise the issue via a third party. It might even be possible to remain anonymous.’ 2) Changes to personal circumstances: If you need to request to take time off at short notice, reduce your hours, work flexibly, or have queries regarding maternity or paternity leave, then HR will be your first port of call. They’ll liaise with your boss and try to make your schedule work for everyone. 3) Personal entitlements: Approach your HR manager when you begin your job and get to know the details of your organisation’s benefits package. What is the company doing about the forthcoming compulsory pension contributions? Can you get involved in a cycle to work scheme? Can you get a free eye test if you work on a computer? Is there a bonus this year? 4) Seek opportunities: If you want to progress in a certain position, then HR can help. This could be through internal training or job shadowing. If it’ll help the company and give your role greater flexibility, it’s quite possible that they’ll go for it considering the financial climate. Alternatively, you may wish to partake in external training. Ask for options for potential part funding, or if the company will at least give you time off to complete the course (more likely if it’s work related). 5) Just to vent! Sometimes it’s good to let off steam with an objective third party. Bottling up feelings about your job, your colleagues or the way your employers run their business won’t help anyone. You might think your HR manager won’t be interested but you’re providing a valuable insight into the mood of the workforce and the running of the company. They’ll probably value your feedback and thoughts as much as you enjoy getting it off your chest. Kevin says, ‘It’s better than exploding at a colleague. It could exacerbate the problem and even lead to a grievance procedure. Who knows, we might even be able to solve the issue that’s making you stressed!’ You may also want to check out Job Satisfaction and Happiness in the Workplace. Author: Amy Chambers writes in association with Join Insurance, the recruitment wing of RBS Insurance. If you’re interested in opportunities in the insurance jobs sector then visit their website today.     Image: Shutterstock

Monday, May 25, 2020

Describe Your Ideal Manager Interview Answers - Career Sidekick

Describe Your Ideal Manager Interview Answers - Career Sidekick Describe Your Ideal Manager Interview Answers Interview Questions and Answers / https://www.edenscott.com/blog Employers love to ask questions about what type of management style you prefer, what type of boss or manager you work best under, and more.They want to see if youll fit into their organization and make sure you dont have a toxic attitude, too. But how can you make sure youre giving a good answer without knowing much about them?In this article, Ill explain how to answer interview questions like:Describe your ideal boss or managerDescribe the type of supervisor you preferWhat management style do you prefer or work best under?Even if you dont know much about their organization or arent sure what you prefer.And without ever scaring the employer away or saying anything thats a potential red flag that could cost you the job!Lets get startedHow to Describe Your Ideal Boss in Interviews1. Know your audienceYoure going to have a much easier time answering questions like, describe your ideal manager (or management style) if youve researched the company before th e interview.That way, you can try to show you appreciate their company culture and style, to show youll be a good match.You dont need to lie, but you do want to adjust your answer to show you can fit into their team. Otherwise, youre unlikely to get hired.So check out the companys website, LinkedIn, Facebook, and YouTube before an interview to try to get clues about their general management style. And then in the interview, if youre talking to your future supervisor or manager, try to note their personality.Do they seem hands-off and relaxed? Or more strict and likely to give detailed guidance each day?Noticing these things will help you answer with confidence (and without costing yourself the job).2. Show you can adapt to any styleYou dont want to paint yourself into a corner when answering this question. So avoid using words like always and never when describing your ideal boss, supervisor, or manager.That way, if youre slightly wrong about what type of management style they have, you still havent cost yourself the job.For example, dont say: I prefer a laid-back management style. I never enjoy working for supervisors who check in often or watch my work closely, and I only do good work when Im left alone.Instead, this is a much better example answer for what management style you prefer:I really enjoy a laid-back management style, but Ive also worked for supervisors in the past who check in often and prefer to guide my work more closely, so Im okay with that as well. I try to adapt to the organization and management style of the company Im in.3. Talk about past jobs to demonstrate how youve worked well with former managers and supervisorsIf applicable, you can mention a past supervisor whose style you adapted to. This isnt 100% necessary, but its always more convincing and memorable to tell a story rather than just say, yes, I can do XYZ.As an example, you might answer by saying: Ive typically been given a lot of freedom to make decisions and self-manage in my career, which I love. However, in my last job, my boss resigned and a new supervisor came in who had a much more hands-on management style. I was still able to work well under this style of management and ended up getting along great with this new boss.4. Keep your answer brief and to-the-pointWhen you describe your ideal manager in an interview, aim for around 20-40 seconds. You dont want your answer to get too long here. Be direct, get to the point right away, and then conclude by sharing an example and/or explaining why you work well under a variety of different management and leadership styles.(This should sound familiar if youve read the steps above and didnt skip down in the article).5. Dont draw attention to any negativesIf you happen to have one or two former managers that you didnt enjoy working under, thats NOT information you want to share in your interview answer.So do NOT say something like: I prefer a hands-on management style. My last boss only checked in with me onc e or twice a week, and I really struggled to get my work done and stay on track.6. Practice your answer at homeI recommend practicing by recording yourself talking into your smartphone (ever modern phone should have a voice recorder app). That way, you can see how your answer sounds and make sure youre remembering the key points you want to mention in your answer.Dont memorize word-for-word; youll just sound like a robot or get nervous in the interview. Instead, focus on talking about the key points you want to discuss, and in the order you want to discuss them.Once youre able to give a clear, concise answer without leaving out key pieces, youre ready for your interview!Example Answers for Describe Your Ideal BossHere are two full sample answers for, describe your ideal boss or describe what management style you prefer to work under?These should sound familiar if you read through the steps above, but will serve as a review and help you create your own impressive-sounding answer.Exam ple Answer 1:I enjoy working under a manager or supervisor who gives me the ability to make decisions and trusts my work, but Ive also worked for supervisors who check-in quite often and have more of a hands-on approach to leadership, so Im okay with that as well. I try to adapt to the organization and adjust my work to add value to whatever style of company Im in, and how my manager prefers I work.Example Answer 2:Ive typically been given a lot of freedom to make decisions and self-manage in my career, which I love. However, in my last job, my boss resigned and a new supervisor came in who had a much more hands-on management style. I was still able to work well under this style of management and ended up getting along great with this new boss.Show Your Future Boss Youd Fit Well With Them!If you follow the steps above, youll have a great interview answer any time an employer asks you to describe your ideal manager or boss.By showing you can work under a variety of management styles, theyll feel confident in hiring you.And by also mentioning your personal preference, youll show them youre giving an honest, thoughtful answer instead of just saying what they want to hear.Thats why the answer steps above are so effective in explaining what management style you work best under because it uses honesty and gives them a genuine answer, while still showing you can work well under a variety of managers, supervisors, and leadership styles.

Friday, May 22, 2020

Massage Therapy as your #SideHustle

Massage Therapy as your #SideHustle Massage therapy is a very viable option as a side hustle.   Is has flexibility for any work schedule, can be relaxing, fulfilling, and is a great income source.   It also can turn into a very rewarding career.   Massage therapy also has many different options other than just a salon. Side hustles can be tricky, and choosing the right one for you is just as hard.   If you want to heal others, and make a difference in the world around you, then massage therapy may be the right choice for you.   Massage therapy is a very fulfilling profession and can lead to great client relationships.   It can also lead to a very healthy lifestyle, which is a great side benefit! Flexiblity The flexibility of massage therapy is the best!   You can choose which hours you want to work.   Do you want to work evenings around your 9-5 job?   Maybe you work nights, and you want to only work on Sundays- that’s ok too!   That is the beauty of massage therapy: you can choose when and how much you want to work. Options Another great perk is that you can choose your modality.   Want to work in a traditional salon, doing Swedish massage, or deep tissue- perfect!   Maybe you have a passion for sports?   There is a huge need for sports massage therapists that work closely with physical therapists during rehabilitation.   Maybe you don’t want to work on humans.   Equestrian massage is a huge market, or even massage for cats and dogs!   There are many areas within massage therapy to specialize in! Getting Started Getting started in massage therapy is easy. Reach out to your state licensing board to see what your requirements are.   Most states require some sort of program completion.   For example, in Arizona that would be AZBMT, where the requirements for licensing is 700 hours of schooling from a NCBTMB approved school.   Also, there is a state test and state licensing as well. Choosing a School When looking at schools, you want to make sure you choose a school that teaches the modality that appeals to you.   A school like Fortis provide many modalities and give students opportunities to explore options.   It is vital you look at the schools in your area to make sure they offer you a variety of modalities to fit your needs. Time to Fly Massage therapy can provide you a very flexible lucrative side hustle.   The best part is as your clientele builds, you can make the decision if you want it to continue to be side hustle, or turn it into a career.   You can also have the option to work independently and be your own boss, or you can always work at a salon and not have to worry about the overhead.   With all the flexibility, options, and freedom that come with massage therapy- it really is the optimal side hustle!

Sunday, May 17, 2020

The Gig Economy Stop Looking For Kansas!

The Gig Economy Stop Looking For Kansas! As Dorothy said in The Wizard of Oz, Ive a feeling were not in Kansas anymore.  She was right.  And you may as well stop looking for it.  Life as it once was a singe job or even career that spanned a lifetime is a relic of times forever gone. The real challenge has been that were still in transition.  Theres still  too much lingering fantasy that youre getting a degree in X and the X will be your lifetime career or pursuit.  And that couldnt be farther from the truth. But we probably need to go deeper than that.  Because even the innocent questions posed to our kids plants outdated seeds.  Yes, even What do you want to be when you grow up needs an update. The Gig Economy: Here To Stay So, since Kansas is off the map, where are we going?  Or, perhaps a better question is, how do we get there?  It begins with the realization that you are the new boss of you.  Whether you wanted it or not,  youve been promoted and now have all responsibility for your future. That may feel like a bucket of icy cold water, but its really good news.  You now have much more control.  Moving forward, as you build on this, youll be building ever more strength and resiliency.  Think of it as never having to worry about the dreaded pink slip again. Where To Start As the saying goes, dont quit your day job.  But what once meant that you should forever plan on staying there, because thats all to which you should ever aspire, now means something different.  That day job pays the bills while youre working on something that actually belongs to you instead of the company. Author Diane Mulcahy outlines these ten rules for successful navigation of the gig economy: Define Your Success Discover your personal vision of success, which might look very different from the traditional American Dream. Diversify Learn to identify and find gigs to increase your opportunities, improve your skills, and expand your network. Create Your Own Security There is no job security.  Understand how to create income security, an exit strategy, and your own safety net. Connect Without Networking Decide if inbound or outbound connecting works better for you, and discover how to make great asks and offers. Face Fear By Reducing Risk Tackle the big fears that are holding you back, break them into manageable risks, and develop an action plan to overcome them. Take Time Off Between Gigs We can expect to take a lot more time off in the Gig Economy.  Heres how to plan for it, and make it meaningful. Be Mindful About Time Reboot your calendar to spend time on what matters.   Consider whether a Maker or Manager schedule works best for you. Be Financially Flexible Forget the save-your-latte-money approach to money management. Restructure your financial life, and increase your financial flexibility and security. Think Access, Not Ownership Owning is so Baby Boomer.  Access the things you want with less debt and more flexibility.  Examine the myths of home ownership. Save For Traditional Retirement . . . But dont plan on having one.  Answer the question: When can I stop working? Excerpted with permission from The Gig Economy: The Complete Guide to Getting Better Work, Taking More Time Off, and Financing the Life You Want by Diane Mulcahy. Published by AMACOM Books. @2017 Diane Mulchay.       Take Action! If youve been finding yourself ever more frustrated by lack of progress in your career and about the things that really matter to you, maybe youve been still too stuck in old-world thinking.  Let the above rules inspire you to action. The Gig Economy  tackles each of the rules and gives effective coaching on getting yourself energized in each of them.  So if youre really serious about creating some change in your life, Id highly recommend picking up a copy.  But above all else, remember this:  the future doesnt care how your world looks when you arrive there.  Its up to you to create it by the actions you take and the choices you make right now, today. About   Diane Mulcahy Diane Mulcahy is author of The Gig Economy: The Complete Guide to Getting Better Work, Taking More Time Off And Financing The Life You Want (Amacom, November 2016). Five years ago, long before the Gig Economy was part of the popular lexicon, Diane created and launched an MBA course on the Gig Economy at Babson College. That course gained immediate traction and was named one of the Top 10 Most Innovative Business School Classes in the country by Forbes. A former venture capitalist, Diane is a Senior Fellow at the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, where she manages the private equity and venture capital investment portfolio.   She writes and speaks frequently about the VC and PE industries and entrepreneurship.   With two earlier books to her name Venturing Forward and Angels and IPOs Diane has had her articles and work featured in The Harvard Business Review, The Huffington Post, The Economist, the New Yorker, Forbes, Fortune, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Institutional Investor, and on NPR and ReutersTV.   Diane holds B.A. and Master of Public Policy degrees from Harvard University. Image credits. Main.   Gig.

Thursday, May 14, 2020

Does Your C-level Executive Resume Differentiate You - Executive Career Brandâ„¢

Does Your C-level Executive Resume Differentiate You Some of the prospective c-suite clients I speak with come to me certain about what needs to be done to improve their executive resumes. A COO, for instance, has seen a resume for another COO that really hit home with him, so he wants his to mimic that one. He wants the same key words in his, the same formatting, the same skills highlighted, and the same kind of feel for him as a person. He bets that the resume he saw was a job-winner. I explain to him what today’s executive resume needs to be and do, and that his approach isn’t a good one. He doesn’t understand the importance of differentiating himself and his unique value from everyone else competing against him. He believes that sameness will help him land the job. A same-old resume would put him on a par with all the other same-old resumes. But with so many competing for so few top-level executive jobs, employers are looking for those who rise above the others. And thats what personal branding helps them do, and why its no longer optional in executive resumes and executive job search in general. My job as a c-suite personal branding strategist is to position them as best-fit candidates for their target employers. This means relying on company and industry research to uncover current challenges facing their target companies, so that we will know how to best present them as the solution to their target companies’ problems. A resume that covers all the bases for ANY COO position (for instance), wont align that candidates unique value with the pressing current needs of their specific target employers. It won’t position that candidate as a good-fit or resonate with those employers. To be fair, it may work. It may get you an interview or two. But it may not work at all, and you will have missed many good-fit opportunities with a resume that never gets seen or read. Are you willing to take that chance and possibly extend your job search by that many more months? And the value of a deeply-targeted, focused resume goes far beyond a digital document that lands relevant interviews. The work involved with targeting, research and personal branding prepare you for the entire daunting executive job search process. Mining the information to develop a killer resume brings you clarity about your value-add in the marketplace, making it that much easier for you to clearly communicate your good-fit qualities, as you network and interview, and know how to ask your network to help you with your career goals. Dont settle for a one-size-fits-all resume. An untargeted, generic resume probably wont hit home with anyone. And avoiding doing the hard information-mining work leaves you unprepared to compete in today’s challenging job market. Related posts: 10 Reasons To Love Your Personal Brand Top 10 Personal Branding and Executive Job Search Blog Posts of the Year Top 10 Executive Resume Branding Tips I’m a CMO But I Need Help Writing My Executive Resume photo by Walt Stoneburner 00 0

Sunday, May 10, 2020

Book review An unused intelligence - The Chief Happiness Officer Blog

Book review An unused intelligence - The Chief Happiness Officer Blog There are many different theories about learning, but not a single one of them states, that the best way to learn, is to sit passively on a chair, while a teacher talks about the subject in question. No theory ever in the history of the world has claimed it, and yet this is how schools, colleges, universities, business training and countless other learning concepts operate. This book subtitled Physical thinking for 21st century leadership marks a departure from that school of thought and describes a way to ground learning in the body. The book is mainly inspired by Aikido. Aikido is a martial art, whose basic tenet is not to meet force with force, but to seek harmony between seperate forces. The book describes a number of exercises that you can do alone in pairs or in groups. Each exercise is designed to stimulate reflection on an aspect of teamwork or leadership. The goal of almost all the exercises is to enable you to remain centered and to create harmony among opposing forces. Being centered means reconnecting with yourself by increasing your awareness of what is going on, and accepting things as they are on your current reality. Thus the book advocates a very different world view than what is common in business today. Many people play business (or even life) as a zero sum game: If I am to win, somebody must lose. Traditional eastern philosophy, which is also present in many martial arts, is more open to the fact that everything is related and connected, and that if I defeat you, I also lose. That the goal is to allow everybody to win. The exercises are described in detail with pictures, are extremely simple and can be performed by anyone. I havent actually tried any of them yet, but they look effective. Apart from the exercises, the book contains background reading explaining the exercises and reall life stories that demonstrate the need for and power of physical learning. Its about time we learn to include the body when we learn, and I recommend this book to anyone interested in exploring this topic. Thanks for visiting my blog. If you're new here, you should check out this list of my 10 most popular articles. And if you want more great tips and ideas you should check out our newsletter about happiness at work. It's great and it's free :-)Share this:LinkedInFacebookTwitterRedditPinterest Related

Friday, May 8, 2020

Cover Letter Examples For Resume - Some Guidelines For Cover Letter Writing

Cover Letter Examples For Resume - Some Guidelines For Cover Letter WritingOne of the most basic writing skills is to write a cover letter. The letter plays an important role in opening and closing the recruiter's call list. A brief but effective cover letter can be created by following some guidelines.To illustrate, let us examine the case of a company that hires someone for the position of a human resources manager. It is well known that resume writing plays a big role in gaining good impression of the applicant. But there are also other skills that you can develop in order to ensure that you have the best impression.o In this type of interview, you will be asked to provide a list of information about yourself and your achievements. To add value to this list, you need to present information that is as specific as possible. In this case, personal references of those people who know you well will prove helpful in drawing attention to your personal achievements.o Another area that req uires specialized information is in regard to special skills. People often hesitate to present them. You can provide good examples of these skills in your cover letter. Perhaps you have expertise in software design or are an expert in marketing.o Finally, you need to include your work history. This is very important as it establishes your working and knowledge level and your ability to organize yourself. The words of those who know you and know your abilities will be helpful.o List of achievements plays an important role. In this case, you can provide interesting information about your work history in order to attract attention to your achievements. If you have to look in your work history, you can use internet databases that contain a list of past jobs of your employer. In this way, you can indicate achievements such as promotion, name of the individual concerned or an organization that is the result of the promotions.Above mentioned are some of the cover letter examples for resume . However, these tips are only general ideas that can prove useful when you are trying to create a good impression for yourself and for the prospective employer.So, do not hesitate to learn more by reading on this very interesting sample. You can also find more samples online.